Sherlock Holmes In America (11 page)

Sasanoff reluctantly lifted the creaky-hinged lid—then stared down into the chest in stunned befuddlement.

“I-I-I don't understand,” he stammered.

I leaned in close enough to peek over his shoulder, yet I couldn't see what had astonished him so.

There were the rocks he'd put in to give the box weight. There was the note he'd put in to give the Whelp his comeuppance.

But then I wasn't just glancing at the note to confirm its presence. I was
reading
it. And that's when my own eyes nearly popped from their sockets.

Instead of this:

I saw this:

We both turned to measure the American's reaction to all this—and found the man gone. In his place was the Whelp.

In his clothes, too. The Whelp had simply stripped away moustache and muttonchops, and there he was, the transformation complete.

The Whelp swept off his hat and bowed deeply, as if our shock was an ovation for him to accept from the stage.

“But . . . how?” I said.

“Acting, of course,” the Whelp replied blithely as he straightened up again. “Aided by the sort of quick change one must master as a utility player with four different costumes in the first act alone.”

When this explanation did little to lift our dangling jaws, the Whelp went on.

“Instead of going to the hotel after leaving the saloon, I followed the map straight here to see what sort of burlesque you had planned for me. Once I'd made my own little alteration to the script, I returned to town, facilitated the necessary wardrobe change with the help of a local pawn shop—the same that supplied you with your costume, Mr. Sasanoff—then stopped by the opera house to avail myself of our makeup box.
Et voilà
.”

He spread out his hands, inviting us to appreciate his makeshift disguise. Seeing him without his false whiskers, his legs no longer bowed, floppy-brimmed hat no longer drooping over his prominent brow, I was amazed that we'd ever been duped. The makeup hadn't been that heavy, really. He'd made little effort to conceal his features. No, much as it pains me to admit—and I'm sorely tempted to strike these lines out—it was the man's superior acting that had carried the day.

[
The above paragraph
was
, in fact, inked out with a heavy hand, and the content of the expurgated section was only discovered after painstaking X-ray analysis of the original manuscript.—S.B.H.
]

“I assume Mr. Tabor told you about the lost silver map swindle at the reception last night,” the Whelp said. “It certainly couldn't have been one of the other guests, as you took such pains not to converse with them. I myself heard of the scheme in an altogether more direct fashion: in the course of my explorations of Leadville, I was approached by not one but
three
‘confidence men' plying variations on the tale. They were all most admirable thespians in their own way, and more convincing than many an Iago or Shylock I've seen. In fact, for all your successes in the theatre, Mr. Sasanoff, I daresay you wouldn't last a second as a buttoner in a public house. Your ‘Mr. Goodfellow' had about him far too much of the actor's West End and not nearly enough of the Cockney's East.”

This slap was, at last, too much for Sasanoff, and his surprise boiled away with the searing heat of rage.

“You arrogant pup!” he thundered. “I'll see to it you never appear on the stage again!”

The Whelp shrugged mildly.

“As you like it.” He turned to go, then stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh, and by the way—you may keep the watch. I bought it in Indianapolis for a dollar.”

And with that, his long legs carried him up the brushy incline slanting down from the road.

I never saw him again. Nor did I hear him spoken of until years afterward, and then in an entirely different (and eternally irritating) context.

For his part, Sasanoff refused to acknowledge the Whelp's existence or even his absence after that day. Queries from our fellow actors he answered with icy stares and silence. It was as if the man had never been with our company at all.

“You will not reveal what happened here. Ever. To anyone,” Sasanoff growled as we trudged back to town in evening's gathering gloom.

I placed my right hand over my heart.

“I will never tell another living soul,” I vowed solemnly.

It was, if I may allow myself a moment of immodesty, the finest performance of the day.

Robert Pohle

Robert Pohle is the coauthor (with Doug Hart) of
Sherlock Holmes on the Screen
(A.S. Barnes, 1977), and has made other contributions to Sherlockian filmography such as
The Films of Christopher Lee
. He is also a member of the Western Writers of America, and author or coauthor of a number of novels in that genre, including
The Fledgling Outlaw
(which features a Sherlockian vignette, and of which the late John Bennett Shaw, BSI, memorably wrote the author, “You do have everything in it except Bing Crosby as a drunken Irish priest!”) Robert lives in Florida with his wife, Maryann, and part of the year in New Mexico with his daughter, actress-singer Rita Pohle. Having once argued, in the presence of Dame Jean Conan Doyle, that Holmes never visited America before the period of
His Last Bow
, Pohle is astonished to have unearthed the present manuscript by Dr. Watson.

“V
ery sorry to knock you up before dawn, Watson,” said Holmes, handing me a steaming mug of tea, “but it's the custom here in the West, you know—and we must get an early start if we're to overtake him.”

“Thank you for not giving me any of that vile stuff that passes for coffee out here,” I replied.

“It's the buffalo chips that give it body,” murmured Deputy Marshal Ames, stirring under his blanket. “Don't go criticizin' American coffee, Doc.”

“Don't fret,” said Holmes, passing a mug his way, “I brewed you a cup of your own.”

“'Sides, you know you're damn fortunate,” continued the Marshal, taking a gulp and then slurping the excess liquid from the corner of his moustache, “gettin' either tea
or
coffee in Mormon country . . . let alone anything stronger,” he added, pouring a thin stream from a glass flask into his mug.

Neither the Marshal nor I realized yet that the rattlesnake slithering toward his heel was shortly to send me on the ride of my life.

But I get ahead of my story.

Readers of
A Study in Scarlet
will recall that Sherlock Holmes had apprehended an American from Utah named Jefferson Hope for the London murders of two of his fellow citizens named Drebber and Stangerson. Hope, it appeared, was seeking revenge for the death at their hands of his lost love Lucy Ferrier. The case never came to trial because Hope died in prison of an aortic aneurism the same night Holmes presented him in handcuffs to Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade of Scotland Yard.

Scotland Yard, and indeed all those who look after the wheels of justice, appeared satisfied that those wheels had turned fully. But Holmes was not; far from it. For there was an accomplice of Hope's who got off scot-free: someone, apparently an athletic young man impersonating an elderly woman calling herself Mrs. Sawyer, who came brazenly into our very rooms at Baker Street in answer to a lure Holmes had placed in the newspapers, an advertisement for a “found” wedding ring.

“Mrs. Sawyer” gave us a patently mendacious story about the ring belonging to her “girl Sally” who would be in dreadful trouble with a brutish husband named Tom Dennis if it wasn't recovered; but when Holmes followed her, clinging to the back of the cab, “she” gave him the slip by leaping out of it in full motion. And subsequently, when Holmes asked Hope who his accomplice had been, Hope had responded provokingly with a wink and replied, “I can tell my own secrets, but I don't get other people into trouble!” Though Holmes acknowledged that Hope's “friend” had done the job smartly, it still rankled him bitterly to leave this part of the case unclosed.

Finally, a ray of light appeared from a familiar quarter: a loud ring at the bell, an audible expression of resigned martyrdom from Mrs. Hudson, a patter of bare feet in the hall and on the stairs, a tap on our chamber door, and then the entrance of young Wiggins, with all the ceremony (or lack of it) befitting a minikin street Arab who was also chief of the Baker Street irregulars.

“Got 'er!” said Wiggins, with considerable satisfaction.

“Have you, by God!” cried Holmes, springing to his feet.

The boys, it transpired, had been circulating along the route Holmes had followed when he clung to the back of the four-wheeler. Holmes reasoned that the sight of an elderly lady rocketing from a moving cab might have excited comment—and indeed it had—and that a doorway that admitted a lady who exited as a gentleman might also have drawn curious eyes. This was the sort of territory where the irregulars were at their best, and it didn't take many questions before the exact address was run to ground.

“Ladies into gents is an easy one,” said Wiggins.

“Is it really?” I asked.

“It's common as a ha'penny upright,” said Wiggins.

“Good gracious!” said I.

“Capital!” cried Holmes.

“But how can you be sure it was the same person, Wiggins, after the, er, change?” I asked.

“Lord love you, Doctor!” the boy chortled. “The little girl wot seen the ‘old lady' go in, tried to touch 'er for summat, you see, and noticed she was shy a fingernail on 'er right hand wot she swotted 'er with—and didn't the very same detail 'ppear on the gent who come out after, and swotted 'er too?”

“This is very good work, young Wiggins,” pronounced Holmes, “on the young lady's part as well as your own! I've always said the Science of Observation—”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” interrupted Wiggins, tugging on Holmes's sleeve, “but I've already read 'er that lecture, an' tipped 'er a tupenny piece as well for the nark job, which you'll see itemized in my expense list—so 'adn't we be going?”

The three of us were soon at the actual address, which proved to be a lodging house of a low sort. I was curious how Holmes would handle the situation, but he simply strode up to the desk next to the entrance and asked the clerk: “Is Mr. Tom Dennis in?”

“Sorry, sir,” drawled the sallow youth under the grimy fanlight, “he just checked out this evening.”

Holmes's disappointment was no greater than my astonishment at his correct guess of the name under which our quarry would be registered, and I said as much as we left.

“Oh, that was a trifle,” he shrugged. “It's an elementary rule to never multiply names unnecessarily—the rogue wasn't likely to be bothered to make up a string of 'em without any need. But what now?”

Holmes looked down to find Wiggins tugging on the pocket of his frock coat.

“'Scuse me, Sir,” he said, “but I natural left Simpson as a tail, an' he'll reliable report back to Baker Street.”

Which indeed he did, but very late that night, with the news, alas, that Dennis had sailed for New York on the SS
Nephite
.

“Well, then, Holmes,” I tried to reassure him, “all you need do is get Lestrade to cable the police in New York, and the man is shackled.”

Holmes sunk deeper in his chair. “Ye-ess,” he murmured, “except . . . I've been thinking . . . ”

Something about my friend's tone worried me. “Surely, Holmes, there's nothing more for you to concern yourself with over this matter? You said yourself, only days ago, that this case was one of ‘intrinsic simplicity'! And I quote you—I took notes.”

Holmes grimaced. “My dear Watson, I shall watch myself more carefully if you are going to be quoting me back to myself like that. What bothers me is that I allowed myself to swallow so much of Jefferson Hope's unsupported confession, and then let slip away the accomplice whose testimony he tried to withhold from me. There's a piece missing, and I want it.”

“Undoubtedly, the New York police will nab him and send him back,” I predicted.

Events proved me wrong. In the upshot, Dennis was too slippery for the constabulary of that metropolis. But Holmes's reaction to this was curious: rather than increasing his frustration, as I had feared, it seemed to fire him with a nervous excitement.

Then we had what I suppose must be accounted a bit of luck—although when I was later careening around the precipitous crags of Utah, and dodging bullets, I was not sure whether that luck was bad or good.

Holmes had cabled a colleague in America who had already helped immeasurably with this case: Police Superintendent Schmitt of Cleveland, Ohio, who confirmed that Tom Dennis was indeed the name by which our quarry had been known for some years, and also that he had been sighted in the proximity of Jefferson Hope while the latter was in that jurisdiction. And by the merest fluke, it happened that one of the Superintendent's sources had informed him that Dennis had recently slipped through Cleveland again—likely on his way back to Salt Lake City. Supt. Schmitt wondered if this tip would be of any use to Holmes in his enquiries.

He would not have wondered long had he been sitting in my chair in Baker Street when Holmes read Schmitt's cable, for Holmes burst up off his sofa like an exploding shell from a mortar.

“Watson,” he asked, suddenly as calm again as if proposing a stroll across St. James's Park, “would you care to accompany me to the Country of the Saints?”

I rose to my feet, dumfounded. “Are you serious?”

“It would make for a change, don't you think?” he chuckled. “A change in perspective does wonders when you're having trouble with a case. We could grill that confounded Dennis once and for all; and then there's nothing like going over the ground of a case for yourself, I've always said. I have that nagging feeling that Jefferson Hope was not quite as forthcoming with us as he might have been.”

“But my dear Holmes—I can certainly not afford it, even if you are able to.”

“Oh, tut!” he said, waving his hand. “A wealthy old lady here in London who is a member of the Latter-Day Saints—we have them here, too, you know—wishes to retain my services. Mrs. Ponsonby-Mallalieu was dreadfully offended by that stupid piece of puffery Lestrade had inserted in the papers after Jefferson Hope died in prison—the one about ‘romantic feuds and Mormonism' being behind the murders, even though there was no trial nor even anyone charged. So the good lady has offered me a generous retainer, plus expenses, to solve the case once and for all.”

“But even with your gifts, my dear fellow,” I expostulated, “with Hope dead that will take a miracle.”

“Well, she believes in them,” said Holmes. “Miracles, that is; and she doesn't mind paying for me to go to Utah, and I think she'll allow me a traveling companion. Even miracle workers need their coadjutors.”

Holmes and I had crossed the ocean on the SS
Liahona
and then went west by train, eventually changing at Ogden, Utah, from the noble Union Pacific to the Utah Central, a Mormon-owned spur that took us right into Salt Lake City, arriving on July 1.

Brigham Young's “New Jerusalem” had been laid out by the Prophet himself a third of a century before, and although the city's population could hardly compare with London's millions, there were tens of thousands thronging its streets, readily apparent as our train came into the station.

“The Mormons chose their honeybee emblem aptly, Holmes,” I said, gesturing through the travel-stained window of our car. “How do you expect to find Dennis amongst this multitude?”

“Well, well!” my companion chuckled. “We can but try! I fancy that Superintendant Schmitt's friend, Marshal Ames, may have a bone to throw us.”

When our bags had been unloaded, we did not have to look for porters or cabmen, as our client had arranged for us to be met by her man of business in Salt Lake City, who turned out to be English, Mr. Edgar Smith.

“No need for surprise, gentlemen,” he assured us. “You'll soon find that a fair percentage of our citizens are from the old country—why, the president himself is an Englishman!”

“What! Mr. Garfield?” I asked.

“No, no!” the man of business replied, in a hurt tone. “
Our
president, the Prophet—John Taylor: the president of our Church!”

Holmes gave me a rather sharp poke in the ribs, and we rode the rest of the way to our lodging demurely in Smith's carriage, our proud guide pointing out to us along the way the remarkable sights of Zion, like Brigham Young's “beehive” house, and the many-spired temple, still a-building after thirty years.